


Erlkönig

by RinkeJamie



Category: Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-01 16:25:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8630929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RinkeJamie/pseuds/RinkeJamie
Summary: Jamie Rinke is pushing forty-five. Jamie Rinke has a girlfriend who loves him. Jamie Rinke has a steady job that pays the bills. Jamie Rinke has left his past behind. Jamie Rinke will never go back to Ellisburg. Jamie Rinke is sane. Jamie Rinke is normal. Jamie Rinke is happy.Jamie Rinke is lying to himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Arc 1: Gestation  
  
1.1**  
 _  
He was in the forest again.  
  
It looked beautiful today. The sun cast a dappled pattern on the foilage below him. He looked, and saw that his feet were bare. Stubby fingers traced the contours of the moist oak trees. The floor beneath him was a vista of green. All was quiet. He touched his hands to his cheeks, and knew that his glasses were gone. Faces flashed through the spaces between the trees, inhuman, warped forms. The creatures that leaped and cavorted in his overactive imagination.  
  
A bird called.  
  
“Jamie!”  
  
No._  
  
“Jamie!”  
  
He blinked. The sound of telephones, of people typing at their desks, of terse, irritated voices, came back into focus. He looked up at his boss’ secretary. Her lips were painted red today, and were drawn into a thin, hard line as her eyes panned over his face contemptuously. “Hello, Jamie. Nice of you to join us.”  
  
He heard a muffled snigger from the cubicle beside him. He cleared his throat. “Ah. Sorry, what were you saying?”  
  
“George wants you in his office _now_.” Catherine smiled falsely; her teeth glinted in the flourescent lights of the office, and for a brief moment Jamie was seized by the ardent conviction that her teeth would look just _fantastic_ in his clenched fist. But, of course, he did not act on it. Coworkers would come and go; he’d been at the company for two decades. After Catherine married and had her children- once George tired of her- she’d be replaced, moved down to a position more suited to her skills. This was a certainty.  
  
Jamie coughed. “I see. Sorry.” Pressing his hands to the table, he brought himself into a standing position and stumped to the office. He left his steaming cup of coffee at his desk; his computer was still frozen at another report, awaiting submission. His untidy script sprawled across a piece of rough paper which he’d rescued from the printer a few days back. Calculations, nothing more.  
  
“Jamie!” George looked up from his computer when Jamie entered. The atmosphere within his office had always been far less oppressive than the rank-and-file environment without. His university mate clapped him on the back, smiling widely, and bade him sit down.  
  
Jamie sat. His nose twitched. Had George started using a new perfume? The office smelled like lavendar this time. “I like the new painting,” he said.  
  
“Oh, this?” George turned. “Yes, I like it too.” His mouth twitched wryly. His hair was grey at the temples; Jamie’s hair, on the other hand, was thinning, a thatchy, reedy patch that had once been blonde and was rapidly being bleached of all colour. “Jamie,” he began, coming round his desk and sitting on one end of it, bouncing his leg, “did I ever tell you what a good friend you are?”  
  
“Yes,” Jamie replied. “You tell me that, like, every time we go drinking and I have to carry you back to your hotel room.” Their quarterly retreats to the West Coast had become a time-honoured tradition, and mostly featured George getting drunk and attempting to flirt with women half his age, while Jamie supported him and apologized on his behalf. George paid for the plane tickets.  
  
George tipped his head back and laughed uproariously. Jamie followed along.  
  
“Jamie, I’m sorry.” George’s expression was suddenly solemn. “The current financial situation is rather problematic.”  
  
“What do you have to apologize for?” Jamie waggled his left hand. “It’s all right. Not your fault.”  
  
“No, Jamie-” George paused and kneaded his forehead. He got up and turned his back on Jamie, facing the skyline of New York, arms akimbo. “Jamie-” He took a deep breath. “Jamie- I’m afraid you’re out of a job.”  
  
Silence.  
  
“What?”  
  
“HR called. We simply can’t afford so many employees. I’ve defended you to them many, many times, and you try your best, you really do, but-”  
  
“I’m fired?” In times of shock, Jamie did not clench up; instead, he relaxed, and now he was drooping in his seat, his face frozen. His jowls quivered- not a nice sight. “I’m fired?” he repeated.  
  
“Yes,” George said, and sighed. “Here’s your severance package.” He came round and delivered a bulging envelope; Jamie took it, uncomprehendingly, and stuffed it into his breast pocket. He routinely saw employees go into George’s office and come out crying; he and George would laugh about it, sometimes. But he never thought it’d happen to him. He pushed his glasses up the fleshy bridge of his nose; his hand was sweaty.  
  
“I’m fired.” Jamie dropped his gaze. “ _Fuck._ ”  
  
“That’s the Jamie I know,” George joked, if lamely. He moved back to behind his desk, and then hovered back to Jamie, placing a warm hand on his hunched shoulders. “If you need any help- any at all- come and tell me. Just give me a call.”  
  
Jamie looked up at George. _Will you really?_ he said to himself. “You said you’d make me Chief Financial Officer one day,” he said. It came out accusingly.  
  
George took a step back. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he replied, hands raised, as if trying to fend off a mad dog. “Look, Jamie. I say a lot of things when drunk, and that was one of those times. This was a decade back, no?”  
  
Jamie looked at his hands, and looked back at George. He wondered if it was worth it to smash the floor-to-ceiling windows, sending him plummeting towards the ground. He wondered if he’d get dragged out by security or by the cops. He wondered if it was the right thing to do.  
  
“Right.” He rose to his feet unsteadily. “I guess I’ll see myself out, then.”  
  
\-----  
  
He entered the taxi.  
  
“Hello, sir, where to?”  
  
Jamie listed his address. Heavily, he shifted his box of things to the seat beside him. His departure had not been one of particular fanfare. Not many people knew him, or, for that matter, knew of him, at the company. At birthday parties, retirement parties, and the many other tiresome functions thrown by colleagues, he was introduced as “Jamie” and seldom referred to for the remainder of the event. He usually left the parties early, anyway.  
  
“Lovely day today, isn’t it, sir?” asked the cab driver.  
  
“I suppose it is,” Jamie said. He twiddled his thumbs and looked in the rearview mirror. His gaze, Jamie noticed, was impassive and frog-green. Not a hint of the inner turmoil roiling and churning within his system, inside his mind. He ran his tongue over his thick lips and removed a little velvet box from his briefcase.  
  
The ring within was destined for Jacqueline’s hand. He’d bought it just the other day; however, circumstances seemed to be against them. Perhaps, when his fiscal situation was less dangerous, he might be able to pop the question. Maybe on her thirtieth birthday, if he could find a fairly stable job by then. He looked out the window at the leaves in the trees, waving in the spring breeze.  
  
Judy Garland was on the radio. Jamie flicked his eyes to the dashboard. “Do you mind turning that up, please?”  
  
“Oh, sure, sir.” The cab driver turned a dial. “Man, this song takes me back. She was in _The Wizard of Oz_ , wasn’t she?”  
  
Jamie nodded tiredly and turned his face to the window. The three-floor brownstone houses, gentrified and prettied-up by young, affluent trust-fund babies, were just beginning to give way to multi-storey apartment buildings, graffiti-stained and peopled by loiterers and drifters.  
  
 _Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high… there’s a land that I heard of, once in a lullaby._  
  
Jamie thought of the forest.  
  
\-----  
  
He entered his dark, echoey apartment building, leather shoes clopping over the cracked tiles, his cardboard box clutched to his chest, briefcase in the other hand. There were not many personal things to take with him- just his coffee mug and little souvenirs left over from the Christmas parties that he’d never remembered to bring back with him; they amounted to quite the pile. The greenish light illuminated his jowled, tired face as it went up, up, up…  
  
His apartment was at the end of the hall. Jamie fumbled with his keys briefly. He thought of hot-dogs. There was a stand outside his apartment. He’d go get one later. With mustard. Ketchup. Chili. Maybe two hot-dogs; he’d keep one for Jacqueline, they’d warm it up in the microwave. He’d tell her to bring back leftovers from her latest waitress gig, and they’d have a candlelit dinner. It was good to save electricity, anyway.  
  
He kicked his box gently into the apartment, and quietly removed his shoes. Striped socks padded over the carpet as he removed his jacket and loosened his tie in the quiet room. The heater was rattling again.  
  
Jamie paused.  
  
What was that? He bent his back into the hallway; their bedroom was ajar. There were sounds coming from there, odd sounds. Moans. The bed was bouncing. Was Jacqueline back? Had his house been broken into?  
  
Jamie removed his glasses with a trembling hand, and checked to see that the door was closed. He thought he knew the answer.  
  
At their dinner table, one of his little sculptures was standing, frozen in a tableaux, sharp teeth bared, ready to strike. It was misshapen, and rather lumpy, but Jamie reckoned that it was still quite beautiful, all the same. He ran his fingers over the little tools that he used to sculpt the clay. Not this, not this, not this, not this… his hands rested on a pair of scissors. He grabbed the little wooden block that he was going to use as a mount for his sculpture, his scissors in the other hand, and advanced down the hall.  
  
There- the bedroom. He opened the door- good. The hinges were very well-oiled, since he’d oiled them himself just the week before. The windows were closed; curtains drawn. What were they trying to hide, hmmm?  
  
There were people in his bed. In their bed. Covered in the sheets. Jamie moved over the rugs, his socks dragging quietly on the carpet. Giggles and masculine moans. His fingers tightened on the wooden block, and Jamie slotted the scissors into his belt.  
  
He pulled back the sheet quickly- Jacqueline leapt back, startled. Her breasts were bare. (He’d never seen them before.) The expression on her face- hair tousled, eyes wide, mouth open- Jamie swung. The wooden block glanced off Jacqueline’s cranium, and she crumpled to the floor, just as another man, swarthy and black-haired, with stubble upon his face, threw back the covers. Jamie watched her as she fell; so she was naked, completely naked. His face crumpled.  
  
“You-” the man began, as Jamie turned to him. The wooden block fell to the floor, stained with blood; he’d broken the skin. Jamie pulled the scissors out.  
  
(It was odd, really. He gave her two years of his life. This was how she repaid him?)  
  
The first stab was the hardest. The man howled briefly as the blade pierced his chest, but Jamie slapped one big hand over his mouth and pushed down as they both fell to the floor, Jamie kneeling on the man’s abdomen.  
  
(He had always wondered who that Pierre character was- the man whom she kept messaging when she thought he wasn’t looking.)  
  
Then came the second stab- Jamie recalled the little biology textbooks that he kept in his study. He consulted them in order to make his sculptures more realistic. There- the Adam’s apple. The scissors flashed again, slick with blood. With the back of his hand, Jamie wiped the red off his glasses.  
  
(First George, now this. Today was a first for everything, wasn’t it?)  
  
His veiny, mottled hands pressed against the man’s skinny neck. Jamie’s lips had twisted into a snarl by then, barely visible in the dim light streaming in through the windows. The scissors flashed again, cutting easily through skin, muscle and nerves.  
  
 _why can’t I make her love me? why can’t I make her love me?_  
  
He hit bone. The man’s eyes were still frozen, staring. Jamie’s hand danced over Pierre’s hairy chest, tapping it in time to the frenzied, palpitating beat of his heart. The knife flashed again, and this time Pierre spasmed in pain. “You’re not ever going to fuck my girlfriend anymore,” Jamie whispered.  
  
 _i wish i could make someone love me love me love me love me love me love me love me love_  
  
He had to be doing something wrong, to have Jacqueline turn to someone as manifestly incompetent as this man, Jamie mused. The man’s heart was still beating- the blood was still flowing- his suit would be unwearable after this. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh echoed through the mountains and valleys of his mind.  
  
 _no one loves me no one loves me no one loves me_  
  
 **DESTINATION  
  
TRAJECTORY  
  
AGREEMENT**  
  
Jamie’s hands sank into suddenly yielding flesh. Pierre’s eyes rolled back into his head, the eye sockets sealing themselves up as his mop of hair disappeared back through rapidly hardening pores. The scissors suddenly fell from nerveless hands as Jamie straightened up, still on his knees, eyes flitting wildly across the thing that Pierre was becoming.  
  
The skin was flaking off in huge patches, taking chunks of flesh with it. Papery and crinkled, glistening white appendages extended from what had once been his left arm. A muffled groan echoed from its mouth as the left arm bucked and strained, tearing free with a gout of viscous, brownish fluid. Both legs had started to hiss and squirm, sticky, eyeless mouths erupting from what had once been a pair of perfectly standard feet. There went the right arm; then all that remained was a head and torso, both utterly unrecognizable as well.  
  
Quietly, wonderingly, Jamie rose to his feet. The creatures skittered up the walls, tearing little holes in the plaster, and the worms wrapped themselves around his legs as he pulled his right hand free, drenched now both in red and brown, fingers still curled around his scissors. The creature curled around his hand quivered, paused, and arose, leathery wings unfurling as three long, saliva-coated tongues licked his face.  
  
Jamie stood, his heartbeat throbbing in his ears. His suit was now utterly unrecoverable. Methodically, slowly, he stripped down to his underwear, eyes dancing over the two serpents curled about his pant legs. Two squat, many-legged creatures- and one leathery, grotesque parody of a vulture. He licked his lips.  
  
“Stay put,” he told them.  
  
Then he went to take a shower, taking care to step over Jacqueline’s unconscious body on the way to the bathroom. He was feeling like a hot-dog right now.


	2. Chapter 2

**1.2**  
  
Jamie emerged from the bathroom half an hour later sopping wet, the welts on his knuckles clean of all blood ( _a little water clears us of the deed_ , he thought to himself giddily) and smiling. Today was looking up. Of course, it had not started out particularly optimistically, but now- now!- he had _powers_. And with powers, he could do anything.  
  
He exited the bathroom, slipping over the ceramic tiles, and paused to enjoy a juvenile action at Jacqueline’s expense. Squatting low over her prone body, looking for all the world like a toad, he retrieved the block of wood and wiped it clean with a tissue paper from the bedside table. The room was dark and dank-smelling; a patch of carpet on the other side of the bed was unrecognizable, having been stained red and brown just a while ago. His creatures- his!- were roaming around a little patch of the room that they had claimed as theirs. Apart from a vaguely moist substance that he recognized as the secretions from the worms and the saliva of the vulture-thing, there was fortunately not much of a mess.  
  
Taking care to keep his eyes on the faint slats of light poking through the drab, grey curtains, Jamie padded over the carpet and opened his cupboard. A shirt. Underwear. Black pants. His regular working outfit. Oh!  
  
He went back into the bathroom and retrieved his severance package. A hefty sum indeed- a few hundred thousand, enough for the whole of next year. George wasn’t a very nasty fella, Jamie decided, and sat heavily on a nearby chair as he dressed.  
  
So: he was a parahuman now. He had also, he supposed, killed a man- though Jamie preferred to think of it as _transforming_ a man. After all, Pierre(?) was still alive, just… all over the place, at the moment. Jamie went back into the bathroom and got his spectacles, looking around the bedroom in an attempt to find other artefacts that he could use. There- a pile of clothing. Black T-shirt, jeans… a wallet. “Pierre Ambrosio”. Italian, eh? He looked like a thug.  
  
Jamie sat down, removing the thin stack of bills in Pierre’s wallet, and thought to himself. Now, how was he going to get out of this?  
  
\-----  
  
The first thing he did was merge his creatures.  
  
They came to him as though compelled- Jamie supposed he was compelling them, after a fashion- and he touched them, each of them. Touching them opened up a vista of possibilities- he could see into them, into every nook and cranny of their bodies, and though the thought of it would have felt like violation to a younger, more naive Jamie, this Jamie was not so squeamish.  
  
No, they were his creations. He had the right. And the knowledge he now had- now held, quivering, in his own two hands- far surpassed his amateurish knowledge of biology. Pheromones, tissue, disease- pah. He knew _everything_.  
  
Feathers blended into slurping flesh blended into cold, black carapaces. Jamie waggled his fingers, as though stirring the unmentionable contents of a blasphemous cauldron, and watched wonderingly as a carbon copy of himself- shirt and pants included- rose before him. This Jamie was far more heavily built- on the whole, more dense- seeing as Pierre himself had been taller and bulkier than Jamie.  
  
Not that it had helped him in the end.  
  
Jamie-2 opened his mouth, and Jamie saw that he had layers and layers of tiny, triangular teeth, rolling and changing as the blue-tinged interior of his mouth quivered and undulated. “What is your command, father?”  
  
\-----  
  
They moved Jacqueline into a chair. She was still naked, and Jamie had the urge to avert his eyes: yet he did not. After all, she wouldn’t be alive for much longer- best to take it in while he still could. He’d waited for two years to see her in all her splendour- now he would wait no longer. Jamie-2 got the duct tape, leftovers from previous attempts by Jamie at playing the handyman. In the quiet living room, all the lights off, a sickly greenish light leaking in from the corridor outside, the black tape went on her mouth: on her arms: on her thighs. Jacqueline stirred- Jamie took his wooden block and bludgeoned her again.  
  
Then he went outside and bought a hot-dog. With chili, mustard and ketchup- just the type. It was five in the afternoon, according to his watch. Loitering outside the tenement building, Jamie scarfed down the hot-dog, his wormlike lips wrapping around the succulent meat and slightly charred bread. Green eyes, slightly rheumy, roamed the street. He had six hours to burn. A cool breeze sent newspapers and fallen leaves flying; a few black teenagers, joking and laughing, shoved by and went on their merry way.  
  
According to Pierre’s wallet and handphone, he was a labourer- a layabout. He worked as a freeland bouncer and photographer, and had once, apparently, been an artist. He lived in a loft in the more affluent part of town, with a considerably more attractive member of New York society. Jamie flipped open the phone and scanned the photographs. Yes; very attractive. He dumped the wrapping into a dustbin and re-entered the apartment.  
  
Jamie-2 was packing for them. Into a small, dilapidated backpack- the backpack that he’d worn on his back as he left Ellisburg with George for university- went money. Stacks and stacks of it- Jamie liked to remain liquid, and Jacqueline preferred to have cash on hand. (He tried not to think about how much money Jacqueline had pilfered from their little pile.) A little pad on hand, he went to the dining table with his bankbook and calculated that he had a few hundred thousand left in the bank. Those few hundred thousands could rot, for all he cared. Who needed that much money when one had powers, anyway?  
  
Jamie switched on the television. The quiet, steady drone of the advertisements broke the monotony of the tiny apartment. Jamie-2 sat down on the couch with a wet, squelchy sound, and stared at the screen, beady eyes unblinking. Jamie left the apartment.  
  
At the convenience store, he bought a pack of cigarettes and five lighters; for the guys at work, he told old Billy O’Harran. The sun was already sinking below the trees. Up in the lift he went: his neighbours, a couple of addicts, were shuffling into their apartment. He nodded at them; the man gave him the finger.  
  
 _Good day to you too,_ Jamie thought sneeringly.  
  
Jacqueline had woken up, and Jamie-2 seemed at a loss as to how to deal with her. She was struggling valiantly- causing all sorts of interesting jiggling- and Jamie-2 had started to slap her around.  
  
“Stop,” Jamie said.  
  
Jamie-2 stopped. Jacqueline stared at him, eyes glistening with tears, and shook her head rapidly.  
  
Something broke. Jamie tore Pierre’s wallet from his pocket and pulled out the man’s identity card. Slamming his purchase on the table, he advanced across the mat to shove his nose into her face. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he told her, panting heavily. “But what’s done is done.” They both knew what he was talking about.  
  
Then he went into his study.  
  
His study did not contain any volumes on accounting: those were in the store-room. No, his study bore shelves and shelves of little figurines and sculptures- amassed over two decades of patient sculpting- and two cardboard crates, one filled to bursting with books on folklore and mythology, the other stuffed with books on biology, both of which he had added to for years. Russian folklore, Germanic fairy-tales, the myths of the Brazilian jungle. And little tidbits about how the muscles moved, how spinchters were controlled by nerves, how the blood in cat’s bodies moved with the ponderous beating of their little hearts.  
  
Jamie had his interests, it was true. He sat down on his chair and switched on the light. Tapping his lips with a finger, he held his ruler and pencil aloft and began to sketch, pausing briefly to gaze at the forest mural stretching from one end of the wall to the other. That helped him to calm down.  
  
After all, he had five hours to wait.  
  
\-----  
  
The TV was still blaring when he came down. It was a little tourism flick from the 1930s, featuring a big band. Jamie-2 was in the same position he’d been in when Jamie had gone into his room at 5: black liquid was leaking from his open maw, and moisture was about his eyes. They had been open for seven hours, after all. Jacqueline was crying.  
  
Did he really look like that? Good God, he was unattractive.  
  
Jamie retrieved the cigarettes from his pocket and flung them at the table, ignoring the soft sound they made as they impacted with the carpet. Caressing Jamie-2’s leathery, mishapen head, he watched as stubby fingers transformed into razor-sharp keratin. Into Jacqueline’s old cup went little globules of kerosene. That was four lighters.  
  
Then Jamie peeled off Jamie-2’s scalp. In his hands, it became a doughy, gelatinous entity without visible sensory organs, quivering gently as he placed it over his head and went into the bathroom. Through the blueish goop, he could see himself, if vaguely.  
  
He started to mould the goop. It adhered to his skin; wrinkles were smoothed out, his double chin forced into a single chin. Chocolate-brown hair seemed to sprout from his scalp, and his ears protruded further. For better effect, Jamie added a little handlebar moustache and a scar across his now-prominent cheekbones.  
  
The gelatinous creature peeled itself off his head. Jamie made it give him a little thumbs-up.  
  
Back into the living room he went. Jacqueline made some noises as he passed her, but he gave her no mind. The cup of kerosene was still on their table; he dropped the gelatinous creature inside with a wet plop, and went to place a hand on Jamie-2’s shoulder again. By the time he was done, Jamie-2 had lost ten kilograms of weight- a facsimile of him, nothing more. Oozing off Jamie’s dripping hand was a veritable ocean of blueish gelatin, slurping across the walls of the room, flowing vertically up the walls, coating the television, the cupboards and the curtains. The only surface bereft thereof was Jamie and his backpack.  
  
He took the wooden block and hit Jacqueline again. No one deserved to burn alive while conscious. Then he went to Jamie-2 and clasped him on the hand: a seam opened in his forehead, depositing a long, serpentine worm into his hand. It slithered into his shirt and wrapped itself about his waist, hidden underneath his shirt. Now Jamie-2 was nothing more than a carcass; bereft of the life that had once inhabited it. He thought it was a fitting end.  
  
Jamie flicked the lighter with his finger. A warm, yellowish-orange flame danced above the metal nozzle, and, gently, he touched it to the bluish gelatin. Coated with kerosene as it was, the fire spread quickly. The bluish gelatin burned merrily, and as it slurped towards its comrades, Jamie left his room and took the stairs two at a time.  
  
He emerged from the fire escape just as the windows to his apartment exploded outwards in a most fascinating pyrokinetic display.  
  
There: Jamie dead, Jacqueline dead, and a charred identity card belonging to a Mr Pierre. Whilst the real Jamie, the true Jamie, set off down the road whistling, money in his bag, a serpent on his chest, and more power in his little finger than the President. At least, that was the plan.  
  
As people emerged from shopfronts, the whites of their eyes visible on this wonderful January night, sirens rising above the cacophony, Jamie backed away from the fire. Hoarsely, he shouted, “Call the fire engines! Call the fire engines!” His leather shoes tapped on the pavement as people squeezed past him in their haste to get away. A chill wind ruffled his full head of hair. Backward he went, eyes still on the fire; he passed one dustbin, two dustbins, three dustbins. Once he saw people opening their windows to watch the massive inferno some distance away, he turned and began to walk briskly, checking behind him every once in a while to appear sufficiently authentic. In any case, there were plenty of other passers-by walking in the same direction.  
  
Jamie turned the corner. The lights of Manhattan were almost visible from here- but he did not want to go to Manhattan. No; he wanted a fresh start. Somewhere safe. Somewhere- somewhere where there was no chance of betrayal, where he couldn’t be caught.  
  
“Taxi! Taxi!”  
  
“Where to, sir?”  
  
“The bus interchange,” Jamie told the driver firmly, sliding in beside him, shifting his bag into his lap. “I’m going to Ellisburg.”


	3. Chapter 3

New York was slumbering when Jamie stepped out of the taxi, green eyes darting from side to side. He inhaled hard as a lady shoved past him, sliding into his seat and slamming the door, narrowly missing one of the tails of his bag. Sirens rose above the genteel hubbub; cold white lights flickered on and off, buses trundling in and out of the terminal some distance away.  
  
There was a lot of money in that bag. Jamie huffed as the yellow cab drove away; the serpent curled around his chest stirred restlessly, as if in anticipation. His leather shoes- _he should’ve shined them before leaving_ \- clopped in a staccato rhythm over the pavement. Jamie kept his eyes on the destitute mendicants arranged on the pavement, pushing his glasses up his now narrow nose. There were very few stars in the sky tonight, not that he looked up at the sky particularly often.  
  
At the counter, he traced the path of the bus; from New York to Ellisburg it was about eight hours. An overnight shift, then. The woman- girl- at the counter glared balefully up at him, festooned with piercings, her back to lists and lists of timings and pricings, and hissed out a sum. Jamie counted out his bills.  
  
A little bit of his chest seized up; he should’ve brought along his sketchbook, his phone. More personal effects, at least, to stave off boredom on the ride. But no matter- Jamie leaned back painfully, gazing in the general direction of his old apartment building. He fancied he could see a plume of smoke rising in the direction of the World Trade Centre. All his personal effects were gone.  
  
Perhaps he had been a bit too hasty in the execution of his plan. Ehh.  
  
Jamie stumped over to the waiting area and sat down, his bag clutched to his chest. Yawning widely, he delved into the sticky-sweet embrace of his serpent and tweaked a few minor details. Mostly venom sacs, anyway. His back arched, suddenly sticky with sweat under his white shirt, jerking against the hard backrest as the compound entered his system.  
  
Another mistake. He should’ve brought along a coat or something. Oh well, at least it would help to reinforce the fiction that all of Jamie Rinke had died in that shoebox apartment in Brooklyn; after all, what use had a dead man for a coat, and hundreds of books on biology, mythology and folklore?  
  
Damn it. There went his books, too. Jamie removed his glasses and gently kneaded the bridge of his nose. There he remained for the next one hour, drifting in and out of consciousness, his money always safely within reach, and within his grasp. The amber-yellow glow of the streetlights danced across his slack face; the change that he had forced over his face was now, to all intents and purposes, fixed; it had bonded with his cells, it had interwoven with the pores and glands; he was no longer losing hair.  
  
Jamie briefly considered the possibility that he might have to remove it some time, and discarded it. That could wait until he was out of this damned city, and until he was absolutely certain that no sirens would come roaring in his general vicinity. At some point, he had wandered onto the bus; had shuffled, head lolling, to the back of the bus, and planted himself firmly by the window, mashing his head against the glass.  
  
He came to abruptly, four hours later or so, trundling down a solitary highway, nary a car in sight. There was a scrawny, destitute-looking youth seated beside him, grinning in a most predatory fashion. Jamie noted, with a vague sense of impending horror, that his bag felt substantially lighter. Muttering to himself, he shifted his arse into a slightly less uncomfortable position, attempting to alleviate the feeling of crumpled, wrinkled, sweaty fabric on his body. God, he was filthy.  
  
And the teen’s pockets… they were full. Bulging. The bastard had stolen from him, most likely.  
  
Clearly, the compound had not been enough to keep him alert. Damn it. Damn it all. He was going to have to go to town on them, wasn’t he?  
  
A small, relatively unnoticed part of his mind wondered why he was being so cavalier about the use of his powers so early on, and was promptly shouted down.  
  
The inky dark of the night was starting to give way to the peachy, infernal light of the dawn; the bus bumped, and Jamie became abruptly aware of the starchy stink of everything, and the constantly coughing, dripping air conditioning. The bus bumped as it encountered another crack in the asphalt. There were about ten or so others on the bus with him. Not counting the driver, of course.  
  
Jamie wondered how closely he could manipulate the vagaries of flesh. Perhaps he could experiment? After all, there was plenty of time left before he was back at Ellisburg.  
  
The snake moved to his thick arms, curling around his forearm. The hairs on the back of his hand pricked up; if the fidgety vagrant beside him had looked, he would have seen something wriggling under the sweat-stained sleeve of Jamie’s shirt. But he did not, and that made all the difference. Jamie looked out the window and rubbed his eyes with the knuckles on his left hand. The snake struck.  
  
The boy slumped; two tiny pinpricks were visible on his wrist. Jamie snapped his gaze to the rest of the bus; sitting at the back as he was, no one turned around, everyone too absorbed in their own problems to notice him. _Notice me,_ Jamie wanted to scream, _Fear me._ But he merely laced a single finger on the boy’s wrist- and in he went.  
  
The sticklike, emaciated wrist bubbled slightly as his finger sank in, but Jamie seized control before the boy dissolved into a mass of ectoplasm. His consciousness flitted, fairylike, over the many biological processes that had seized up and stopped short. With painstaking precision and a meticulousness honed by twenty years of vetting accounts, he kickstarted the heartbeat; forced the muscles in the stomach to spasm; fried hundreds of thousands of nerves.  
  
A croak. Jamie’s lips tightened. Well, clearly he still needed practice. He surveyed the vagrant’s external appearance: a blue-tinged face, the skin almost translucent. Nothing of the original consciousness, as it were, remained. He’d have to reconstruct the capacity for autonomous thought from scratch. The same for the joints and whatnot. Quietly, he sighed. A branch scraped by the window, and he directed his gaze back to the front.  
  
Someone had turned to glance at them, and only just turned back.  
  
Jamie snapped his gaze back to the boy with a widening grin. “Return me my money,” he commanded hoarsely.  
  
The boy reached into his pockets and pulled out wads of notes. Jamie unzipped his bag. The sound of a sharp inhalation- the lifeless patch of brown hair on Jamie’s head stirred as his head snapped back up. God, he’d get whiplash at this rate.  
  
The air left his mouth in a quiet gust; most of the other passengers were staring at him- or, more specifically, at the massive bag of money that was still open in his lap, exposing piles and piles of paper notes. “What do you say?” he muttered out the corner of his mouth, at the lad beside him. “Shall we have some fun?”  
  
“Yes, daddy.”  
  
“Good boy.”  
  
The snake curling around his forearm, weaving in and out of his stubby fingers, quivered in ecstasy as the boy beside him _exploded_ into spherical, carapaced many-toothed monstrosities, hurtling the length of the small bus in seconds. Most of them burst out the front window; the bus driver shouted, and reflexively jammed his shoe on the accelerator. But tongue-like appendages lashed out, clinging pendulously to the gaping shards of glass. Clambering back in, they propelled themselves through the air at the passengers, latching onto their faces.  
  
Jamie stood up and began, unsteadily (the bus was still screaming ahead), to move to the front. Muffled screams died down as the acid did their work, hollowing out eye sockets and dissolving flesh and nerves. After all, Jamie reasoned, if there were no nerves, there was no pain. Hormones rushed in to fill the gaps, and, unsteadily, the passengers slapped a spasmodic hand on the handle-bars and stood up to join Jamie.  
  
“I hope there will not be a problem,” Jamie said quietly.  
  
“N-no, sir,” the driver gasped. A vaguely spider-like creature crawled onto the steering wheel and snatched his handphone out of his hand, crushing it between muscular joints like a nutcracker. It proceeded to smash the walkie-talkie, the radio… any and every means of communicating with the outside world. Now the bus was truly alone, adrift on a lonely country road. The wind whistled in Jamie’s hair. The sun was still rising above the tree-tops; a translucent liquid erupted with a hiss from somewhere near Jamie’s collar, catching the tips of the spider’s leg. Deftly, it weaved a rapidly hardening artifice over the shattered remnants of the windshield.  
  
There. Good as new. With a sigh, Jamie sat down, one hand on the bars, his head dipping. One of the passengers- beady, crystalline eyes erupting from the carapace that had become his new face- turned to survey the bus driver, who jerked abruptly and kept driving.  
  
Would they be spotted? Was traffic so thick, that a person driving by would be moving at sufficiently slow speed to notice that the passengers on the bus had something latching on to their face? Best not to risk it. Jamie crooked a finger.  
  
The crablike things clattered into the seat beside him, tearing out stuffing in order to conceal themselves. In their place, his passengers bore glassy eyes, bloody noses and wrinkled mouths; upon closer inspection, of course, it would be obvious that these facial features were fake. But they looked reasonably human, at least, and that was what mattered.  
  
Jamie relaxed into his seat and settled in for the long ride.  
  
\-----  
  
Leonard took a long drag on his cigarette and shielded his face against the glare of the morning sun; the bus from New York was rolling in. Not many people visited Ellisburg these days; it barely broke the ten-thousand line, anyway. A backwater, compared to the really big cities. He waved as a group of men- travelling together? hooligans? eh, who cared- dismounted from the bus. One of the men- brown-haired, heavyset, a stuffed haversack on his hunched back- glanced at him and gestured at the bus.  
  
Harry opened the door and began walking over to him. Leonard cupped his hands to his mouth. “Oi!” he shouted. “Drive your bloody bus over, Harry! I can’t fucking fill it with oil if you don’t, right?”  
  
Harry moved faster; his eyes were empty, and slightly disconcerting. He’d been driving drunk again, hadn’t he. Leonard sighed; his cigarette landed, with a practiced flourish, in the bin beside him. He clapped Harry on the back as the man passed him, and followed his pal into the convenience store. Rounding the counter, he planted his forearms on the chipped plastic and looked up.  
  
Harry’s eyes, nose and ears were gone- disappearing into fleshy orifices that had closed in seconds. In their place, his mouth was rising up- a huge, gaping maw, rows and rows of glistening teeth, forcing the doughy flesh upwards and sideways to accomodate it. Leonard stared; piss started to stream down the side of his pants.  
  
Harry bit.  
  
\-----  
  
Jamie whistled. Sweat streamed down through his full head of hair as he ambled down the road, his hands in his pockets. This part of town, with its picket fences and squashed, put-upon houses, was the part of the town where older people congregated- especially old people who had nowhere else to go and had plenty of money. Before that, it had been part of the town, home to a bustling Christian community: but times had changed, the Endbringers had come, and whatnot.  
  
He paused at a door completely identical to the others before it, knocking smartly. There was the sound of shuffling from the other side, and then it opened.  
  
“Hello, Mother,” Jamie said.  
  
“Who are you?” the pinched-looking, white-haired old woman snapped, looking for all the world that she’d bitten into a lemon.  
  
Jamie stopped. The men who had been following him, each of them with a slightly dazed expressions (and a little monster hanging on to their bare backs for dear life), stopped lumbering around as well. “Jamie,” he said, hesitantly. “I had, ah,” he looked around at the other men for support and found none, seeing as they were bereft of independent thought, “-plastic surgery. Yes. Plastic surgery. Why do you think I look so young, Mother?”  
  
The old hag screeched. “Jamie wouldn’t destroy the face that God gave him!” she howled, and slammed the door in his face. “You and your hooligans may be one of his Devil-worshipping friends, but you won’t fool his mother!” Then- through the wooden gate- the muffled sound of a door slamming.  
  
Jamie scuffed his shoes on the pavement. Well, it wasn’t quite the triumphant re-entrance he was waiting for, but this _was_ the woman who’d endured his father’s belt when Jamie couldn’t take it anymore. He owed her that much- skipping town and never sending back so much as a letter for twenty-plus years- she deserved better than this.  
  
 _She deserves better than this. **I** deserve better than this._ Jamie forced his mouth open, savouring the click as his jaw struggled to close, his eyes rolling madly in their sockets as he sat down on the pavement heavily.  
  
What on earth was he doing here, visiting his _parents_? Gods didn’t have parents. **Gods didn’t have-**  
  
Jamie tapped his finger to his lips thoughtfully. He reached for a random forearm, and tore off a strip of papery skin, popping a finger out of its socket. A dribble of black fluid became a steady stream, and Jamie began to sketch.  
  
\-----  
  
January Rinke was happy that her husband was ill.  
  
She knew that it was a bad thought to have- women were supposed to love and cherish their husbands, after all- but John had been in a very bad temper lately; he’d refused to go to church last Saturday, and that, in January’s book, merited at least some meek criticism of her husband. Even worse, the Millers and Longwoods had been very curious. Especially the latter- they never stopped flaunting the baubles that they’d bought with George’s money. Little Georgie, all grown up in New York.  
  
What about Jamie? What about Jamie!  
  
“Jan,” her husband gurgled. January blinked. Her knees creaked as she turned away from the dusty window.  
  
John stared at her through his one functional eye, the other too loaded down with cataracts to truly see anything. His ribs rose and fell. The many fans in the room made a hideous rattling noise. January placed the spoon in his mouth and watched as most of the porridge found its way onto his pyjamas. “Tasty, isn’t it?” she murmured. “Something strange happened today.”  
  
“?” Her husband made a wordless sound of curiosity.  
  
“A boy- half our age- came by, saying he was Jamie-”  
  
John’s face turned red, and January was about to reassure him, lest he start choking again- but there was a bang on the floor downstairs, and a hoarse, wretched howl.  
  
“ _Mommy! I’m home!_ ”  
  
January grabbed her broom and stomped downstairs. John watched her leave, his eye tracing her movements dimly, trapped in his own body for the remainder of his existence. “Who’s there?” she screeched. “I’ll warn you just this once! I’m calling the cops!”  
  
It was the man from before, and he was inside their house, gazing around with thinly-veiled contempt at their humble abode, running a thick finger over an old family photograph. “You still keep this?” he asked, voice back to normal. “I expected better of you, Mother.”  
  
January had not heard her son’s voice in years, but this was definitely not what she would have expected, even so. Not disappointment. Not indifference. Not the cursory violation of her private property and her privacy. She sat down with a thump on the creaky wooden stairs as the framed photograph crashed to the floor in an avalance of glass pieces. There were men outside- men with the same eyes and the same face, their faces pressed to the glass like a pack of dogs out for blood.  
  
The man was breathing heavily, and when January next swung her dull gaze to him, he was wiping his forehead. “You didn’t think I was your son, did you?” he inquired, running his tongue over wormlike lips. “Well, allow me to be the first to prove you wrong.”  
  
January did not answer. Nothing was making sense.  
  
The man pulled at his cheek; it came off with the sound of paper tearing, and a cut opened, fresh blood leaking from the wound. “Here… we… go,” he said, and pulled a chunk of his face off with a scream. The men outside pressed their faces to the glass, eyes wide, the windows shuddering as they spasmed upon the glass.  
  
When he was done, grinning at her through the blood, wiping red off his face with his sleeve, running his hand through thinning hair, January saw it. She saw the connection. She saw something. Yes, she saw something, but it sure as hell wasn’t her son.


End file.
